Transferring an existing domain involves changing the company that handles the domain registration service, so after the transfer itself, you will have to manage things like renewal payments or DNS updates through the new registrar company. The transfer procedure itself is standard with most generic and country-code Top-Level Domain extensions. Certain country-code extensions are more specific and involve different procedures, but in the general case transferring a domain entails a few necessary procedures and one of them is unlocking the domain name. The lock is a safety feature, which is being embraced by more and more domain name registry operators. It’s a default feature supported by all generic Top-Level Domains. If a domain name is locked, it will be impossible to initiate a transfer process, so nobody can even try to snatch your domain name. The lock can be removed only through the account where the domain name is registered and all new domain names that support this functionality are locked by default when they are registered.